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#FA Success Ep 324: Managing Revenue And Income Volatility Through The Scaling Phase Of Growth, With Nancy Knous

March 14, 2023 07:06 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 324th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Nancy Knous. Nancy is the CEO and Founder for Benchmark Wealth Management, an independent RIA affiliated with LPL Financial based in Memphis, Tennessee, that oversees nearly $340 million in assets under management for almost 1000 client households.

What's unique about Nancy, though, is how, after reaching a moment of business crisis during the market volatility of the 2008-2009 Financial Crisis, the market decline and associated decline in her AUM fees led to a cash flow squeeze and resulted in Nancy having to ask her assistant and best friend for a loan just to make payroll for her staff… which, fortunately, led to substantive changes in how Nancy now manages the profit margins of the firm, allowing her to scale up the business to more than 20 team members and not having any business cash flow problems during the 1,pandemic.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how, during the Great Recession, Nancy (like many other advisory firm owners at the time) were facing the challenges of a 30-40% market drop and its subsequent effect on her firm’s revenue but because she took for granted that she was a CFP professional with a ‘good’ income she didn’t need to monitor it that closely (until the month she discovered she was coming up $5,000 short on her staff payroll obligations!), how, after struggling with her firm’s and her own personal finances, Nancy asked her business partner for help and he suggested she read Dave Ramsey’s “Total Money Makeover” which helped her transform her own money habits, pay off her accumulated debt over 7 years, and inspired her to become a SmartVestor Pro and even use the book to help her clients engage in deeper conversations about their money habits and savings, and how Nancy has been able leverage Ramsey’s SmartVestor lead generation program to grow her firm to 5 referrals per week (where 2-3 of those referrals became clients), and over a couple of years, gain more than 100 new clients per year.

We also talk about how Nancy and a few other advisors from her previous firm decided to follow one of their well-respected advisor colleagues to start an independent firm with LPL, but it wasn’t until later that she suddenly realized that she had now become not just an advisor but an advisory firm business owner as an independent but that becoming a business owner also meant she now had an opportunity to manage her business and treat her employees the way she felt was best (and steer away from some of the negative experiences she had previously as employee), how, as her firm has grown, Nancy has begun stepping away from client-facing duties and transitioning her clients to another advisor in her firm so that she can focus more on becoming the firm’s visionary and leading it forward to the next stage of growth, and how Nancy realized through trial and error the importance of having employees that are not like her and the need to find the types of employees that complement her strengths and weaknesses which has led to her now using personality tests (like Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni) and developing a 4-8 week hiring process that includes several meetings with team members and even a group dinner comprising of the candidate and their spouse along with firm members and their spouses to really ensure a good fit for the firm.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Nancy shares how she coped with failing her Series 7 exam 5 times in the span of a year before she realized she may have a learning disability and then after consulting with her doctor, she was able to find the right medication for her that improved her focus so much, that years later she got the highest grade in her class on her Series 24 exam, how Nancy spent the better part of 30 years of her career feeling inadequate about her abilities as an advisor because she feared she wasn’t as technical or analytical as other advisors but through supportive friends and colleagues realized that she can have great confidence in the success she’s created through her strength in relating to clients, and why Nancy has recently become a certified Dream Manager to develop her team and inspire them to go beyond traditional goal-setting as she feels that dreams have a deeper financial planning meaning than mere ‘goals’ and hopes to one day translate her training into workshops for her clients so that they create better connections with their dreams… and as a result, achieve more of their financial objectives.

So, whether you’re interested in learning about how Nancy overcame her debt challenges to help her firm scale and grow, why Nancy employs a stringent hiring process and personality tests to find the right employees, or how Nancy uses the lessons she learned to help her clients avoid financial pitfalls, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Nancy Knous.

The Future Of Advisor Platforms: Reducing Overhead Costs With Services (Not Technology)

March 13, 2023 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

For the past several decades, platforms for advisors have differentiated with the quality of their technology. The focus on ‘tech’ was a natural evolution for advisor platforms away from their roots – which was originally to differentiate by the quality of their proprietary product shelf, the primary means that brokerage firms and insurance companies attracted advisors to them in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. As product shelves became increasingly open architecture in the 1990s and 2000s, what mattered wasn’t the particular products made available to advisors (because the answer increasingly was “anything you’d want is already there”), but the technology that the advisor platform made available to implement those products and help the advisor better run their business.

However, the reality is that it’s very expensive to build and maintain technology, especially when considering the full range of CRM, portfolio management, financial planning, and more than a dozen other sub-categories of technology that financial advisors use in their firms. Consequently, the technology that most of today’s advisor platforms (e.g., broker-dealers, RIA aggregators, TAMPs, etc.) are touting is not actually their own proprietary technology… it’s a selection of third-party technology tools they’ve woven together to become the ‘tech stack’ they offer to their advisors. Which is usually one from a list of just 3 leading providers in any particular category. Such that, in the end, advisor platforms are increasingly all offering the exact same technology tools… and signaling an end to differentiating advisor platforms with technology altogether!

So what’s the alternative for advisor platforms to differentiate in the future? In a word: Services. Because advisory firms still – and will always – continue to need team members to provide service and handle the tasks that go beyond what technology alone can automate.

In practice, support services from advisor platforms might include a wide range of consulting services – from compliance to an advanced planning team, operations to technology – that advisors could engage for a fee as needed. Though arguably the even bigger opportunity is for advisor platforms that provide ongoing staff support services in the key areas where advisory firms need ongoing support – from (virtual) assistants for administrative tasks to ongoing compliance support, bookkeeping, and financial reporting to paraplanning, trading and investment research, and more. Staffing needs that already consume 15% or more of the typical advisory firm’s revenue today… as compared to the barely 4% of revenue that the typical advisory firm spends on technology. Which means that providing services is actually far more of an economic opportunity to serve advisors than it is to ‘just’ solve their technology needs!

In the long run, the growth of advisor platforms as service providers – not ‘tech’ platforms – will also create more opportunities for differentiation, as some will inevitably be better at delivering services than others and/or will be better at the needed services for particular types of advisors with whom they can specialize. Which also gives the most successful service-providing advisor platforms more pricing power in what has become an increasingly commoditized payout-centric competitive environment. As well as the opportunity to drive greater margins for themselves by reinvesting into technology – not for their advisors, per se, but for themselves – to better deliver their services to advisors as ‘tech-enabled service providers’.

The key point, though, is simply to recognize that advisor platforms are not large enough to build all of their own technology from scratch, and cannot sustainably differentiate themselves by offering the same suite of technology solutions that more and more other advisor platforms are offering as well. The opportunity comes in the gaps between technology – the service work that humans must still accomplish – that drive most of the costs of advisory firms as service businesses in the first place. Which means the most successful advisor platforms in the future will be those that best deliver services that allow advisors to run the human parts of their businesses more efficiently!

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (March 11-12)

March 10, 2023 02:21 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of “Weekend Reading For Financial Planners” - this week’s edition kicks off with the news that President Biden released his latest budget proposal this week, which calls for a range of tax increases on higher-income and wealthier taxpayers to fund deficit reduction and the president’s spending priorities. While the budget almost certainly will face stiff resistance in a divided Congress, proposals that could affect financial advisors and their clients include increasing the top income and capital gains tax rates, raising the Net Investment Income Tax rate and applying it to pass-through income, and increasing the amount of the child tax credit.

Also in industry news this week:

Altruist’s self-clearing custodial platform has gone live, offering RIAs of all sizes an alternative to larger, legacy custodians
While the SEC is planning to increase the number of on-site examinations it conducts, the odds that a firm will experience an exam in a given year appear to be remaining steady

From there, we have several articles on tax planning:

How advisors can add value to clients by helping them maximize the benefits of their Health Savings Accounts
How the IRS could be preparing to finalize regulations that would require some beneficiaries with inherited IRAs to take RMDs this year
Why higher interest rates affect the utility of a range of trusts used for estate and tax planning, from GRATs to QPRTs

We also have a number of articles on practice management:

How competitive pressures and growth challenges could drive RIA M&A activity in the coming year
A process that can help advisory firm owners craft a succession plan that matches their goals for their firm and for their own retirement
The major role that emotions play in an advisor’s decision to sell their firm and how to prevent them from scuttling a deal

We wrap up with three final articles, all about the uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled tools for advisors:

How a new tool embedded in Microsoft Word can help advisors craft and edit content
How advisors can use AI-enabled tools to more efficiently generate content ideas, proofread text, and create marketing videos
Why ChatGPT could be a valuable tool to support advisor marketing, from creating ad copy to drafting prospect emails

Enjoy the ‘light’ reading!

Kitces & Carl Ep 107: The Strategic Planning Process And Coming Up With (New) Ideas To Try

March 9, 2023 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

For many financial advisors, annual strategic planning is an essential process that establishes clear and specific business goals for the year, along with the steps necessary to achieve those goals. Additionally, it helps advisors make informed decisions about the future direction of their business. As important as strategic planning is to the evolution of the business, coming up with new ideas to implement as part of the strategic plan can be difficult, and choosing which ideas to develop and implement can be even more challenging.

In our 107th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss ways for advisors to find new ideas, the process of narrowing down their options and choosing the best ones, and how advisors can vet and test the viability of their ideas before implementing them on a larger scale.

Generating new ideas is essential for individuals looking to innovate and grow their businesses, but the reality is that good ideas don’t always come easily or quickly. A good way for advisors to stimulate the ideation process is to increase their exposure to new information – whether it be through reading books, engaging in more conversation, attending conferences, or joining study or mastermind groups, experiencing new perspectives can give advisors a fresh outlook and help them come up with their own new ideas. And as a collective of new ideas is gathered, identifying the 2 or 3 ideas that resonate the most with the advisor can help them narrow down their options to those that will most likely help them progress toward their goals.

Once the advisor has chosen 2 or 3 of their best ideas, vetting the ideas with trusted – and unbiased! – mentors, coaches, colleagues, and/or friends can help the advisor gain useful feedback and insight, which can help them develop a better sense of whether they have a sensible, fully formed idea worth pursuing. Next, analyzing the required steps to implement each idea and the potential outcomes can help narrow down their options further, determining which of the ideas is best to pursue on a long-term basis. While making a long-term commitment to an untested idea can feel scary, figuring out how to break the idea into smaller, testable steps can make the process easier and less risky.

Ultimately, the key point is that implementing new ideas is an important and exciting part of strategic planning, and while finding the right ideas to implement can be challenging, it can be facilitated by following a systematic idea-gathering framework. Such a process can involve multiple steps that focus on information gathering, brainstorming and gut-checking, asking for feedback from various sources, and devising ways to test drive ideas on a smaller scale to evaluate their viability and to save time, money, and resources. This process allows advisors to pivot and course correct when necessary, relieving the pressure of having the ‘right’ idea right away and avoiding ideas with less chance of success, which, in the end, creates opportunities for the advisor to investigate and pursue even more worthwhile ideas!

Factor Investing And Its (Behavioral) Persistence: Facts and Fiction About The Zoo Of Factors

March 8, 2023 07:07 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Investments

In the early days of investing, stocks were often evaluated in a vacuum: Investors assessed the plusses and minuses of each company’s stock based on its own merits, with little consideration of the relationship between one stock’s performance and that of the market as a whole. Then, in the 1960s, with the advent of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), investors began to look at stocks (and by extension, pooled investments like mutual funds as well as entire portfolios) through the lens of a stock’s risk compared to the entire market (and concurrently, the expected return that investors demanded to compensate for that risk). A stock’s ‘beta’ – generally speaking, its riskiness compared to the overall market – was considered a key driver of its future performance.

In the early 1990s, however, the release of a landmark study by Eugene Fama and Kenneth French introduced the concept of “factors” beyond beta that could influence a stock’s performance. Though Fama and French’s study focused on 2 factors (size and value), investment research in the subsequent 30 years has identified hundreds of additional factors that investors can use to adjust their return opportunities and expectations in constructing diversified portfolios.

Although the rise of factor-based investing has created many possibilities for advisors to add value by optimizing the risk and return profiles of their clients’ portfolios, the explosion in the number of potential factors creates its own new challenge for investors, from determining how to evaluate the factors themselves to deciding which ones are really useful in making investment decisions. As it turns out, when filtering the “zoo of factors” down to only those that have had explanatory power to predict above-market returns (as well as that meet a series of tests for persistence, pervasiveness, robustness, investability, and the logic of how they operate), there are really only a handful of factors that are truly worthy of investment (including size, value, momentum, quality, profitability, and quality for equity; as well as term and credit quality for fixed income), which make it much more manageable for investors to implement a factor-investing strategy.

Furthermore, focusing on just the most salient factors can allow investors to avoid some of the criticisms of factor investing raised over the years, including that factors are overly risky compared to the market, that factor investing is prone to failing at inopportune times, and that factors have become irrelevant (or perhaps too well-known and ‘overcrowded’ to produce excess return) for investors going forward. In reality, the body of evidence that supports factor-based investing has only grown larger with time – as long as one focuses on just the factors that have actually proven to be effective.

The key point is that while investment risk is impossible to eliminate, factor-based investment strategies have been shown by a wide body of data to create excess returns without adding to a portfolio’s overall risk. While factor investing isn’t a panacea and can itself be prone to long periods of underperformance, the evidence has shown that it can reward investors who are willing to stick with it. Ultimately, factor investing can be almost as much about behavioral factors as economic ones: The fact that so many investors aren’t willing to endure the risk of underperformance creates potential rewards for the ones who are!

#FA Success Ep 323: Sustaining A $5B Advisory Firm To The Third Generation Of Leaders, With Yonhee Choi Gordon

March 7, 2023 07:05 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 323rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Yonhee Choi Gordon. Yonhee is a Principal and the Chief Operating Officer of JMG Financial Group, an independent RIA based in Chicago, Illinois, that oversees nearly $5 billion in assets under management for close to 1,500 client households.

What's unique about Yonhee, though, is how, through her nearly 4 decades with JMG Financial Group, Yonhee has been a part of not only the firm’s succession plan to its second generation of owners but now to its third generation of leaders… and along the way, has personally recruited, trained, and retained the majority of the firm’s employees, by implementing stringent assessments in her hiring process to ensure that new employees are in alignment with the firm’s expectations and values to be able to succeed and grow with the firm for the long run.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how during Yonhee’s 36 years with JMG, she has not only seen the evolution of the firm and its three generations of ownership and leadership, but has been integral in building the hiring, training, and development systems that has allowed the firm to transition to its current generation of partners and owners (most of whom have been with the company for over 20 years, after first being hired and trained by Yonhee herself), why Yonhee creates and implements a unique kind of work sample assessment for all prospective employees based on the actual duties of the position she’s hiring for so that she can evaluate how the candidates think, process information, and approach problem-solving with the actual tasks of the job, and how JMG structures its leadership roles, where Yonhee not only oversees the training and development of newer advisors, but also coordinates and supervises the Accounting, Operations, Human Resources, and IT departments as well as working with the firm’s Chief Talent Officer.

We also talk about how JMG developed their own proprietary CRM internally more than 25 years ago because they realized they would need better capabilities to input tax preparation data than CRM systems had at the time, and in the years since have been able to further customize the software to their precise needs as the firm grew, why JMG implements strict criteria for who can own shares of the firm, including a limit on ownership size with a cap of 20% of shares, and a rule that requires owners over the age of 70 to sell back their shares to keep ownership fresh and more closely connected to the current state of the firm, and why JMG implements a client capacity of 50-80 clients per advisor and how it keeps detailed track of the time it takes for employees to complete clients tasks to both avoid burnout and continually develop better and more efficient processes.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Yonhee shares why she believes that a portion of the industry’s rising level of M&A deals is really a result of inconsistent definitions of advisor titles and insufficient career paths that are failing to nurture newer advisors into the next generation of owners, why Yonhee advises younger, newer advisors to first understand the culture and values they feel are most important to them personally, and then use those standards to find their ideal role at a firm (to ensure it’s a firm that will take the time to support them and help them grow), and why Yonhee’s own definition of success has changed over time, where at this stage it's less about her personal career growth and more about the impact and value she can provide in the lives of the employees that she leads and the pride she feels knowing she is developing the next generation of leaders in the financial services industry.

So, whether you’re interested in learning about how Yonhee and her firm have remained successful through 3 generations of leaders, the unique way Yonhee thinks about finding the right employees and training them for success, or how Yonhee navigated being a Korean women in a male-dominated field and rose into a partnership role, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Yonhee Choi Gordon.

The Latest In Financial #AdvisorTech (March 2023)

March 6, 2023 07:04 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Welcome to the March 2023 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!

This month's edition kicks off with the news that Conquest, a Canadian financial planning software provider (founded by the prior founder of NaviPlan) has raised $24M (CAD) of private equity capital in preparation for expanding its reach into the US – for which it hopes its technology-aided ability to analyze a client’s plan and suggest “next-best decision” strategies for advisors to recommend to their clients will allow them to break into the crowded US market. Which at best will still be a substantial uphill battle, given the hassle of switching from one financial planning platform to another (and the fact that most advisors are generally satisfied with their current financial planning software in the first place!).

From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

Asset-Map has raised $6M in Series B funding as it scales up its financial visualization tool for enterprise use amid growing demand for advice engagement tools
Wells Fargo Advisors debuts LifeSync, an app-based tool combining features of goal-based planning and monitoring of financial “vitals” as the megafirm moves further into its own advice engagement at scale
Orion launches BeFi20, a behavioral finance assessment to support client conversations around money psychology (and identify how financially “aligned” couples are in their money attitudes)

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month’s column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:

Merrill Lynch has rolled out a new turnkey video creation platform allowing its advisors to record short videos with a quick compliance sign-off (and more impressively, has apparently solved for the challenge of centralized compliance approval of individualized advisor content at scale)
The popularity of ChatGPT has opened up a discussion about the potential role of artificial intelligence in the advisory world – and while some predict it may replace advisors entirely, the evidence of past technological advances suggests it will prove to be one more tool to automate repeatable back- and middle-office tasks and allow advisors to focus on more planning at a higher level!

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular “Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map” (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!

*And for #AdvisorTech companies who want to submit their tech announcements for consideration in future issues, please submit to [email protected]!

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (March 4-5)

March 3, 2023 01:44 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of “Weekend Reading For Financial Planners” - this week’s edition kicks off with the news that amid economic and market headwinds, the pace of RIA M&A activity was slower in January and February compared to the same period last year. If this trend continues, 2023 would be the first year in more than a decade to see fewer transactions than the year before, though some industry observers continue to see significant appetite for deals.

Also in industry news this week:

A recent FINRA arbitration ruling reaffirmed the ability of brokers operating in the independent broker-dealer model to take their clients with them when they change firms
A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators is considering potential ways to shore up Social Security, from raising the retirement age to 70 to creating a sovereign wealth fund

From there, we have several articles on practice management:

How advisory firms can leverage their CRM software to run a more efficient practice
Best practices for firms to consider when choosing training programs
Why getting back to basics, particularly when it comes to decision making, can help firms overcome challenging market conditions

We also have a number of articles on wealth:

What being ‘upper-middle class’ actually means in dollar terms
Why many consumers overestimate the size of the nest egg they will need to have a comfortable retirement
How advisors and clients might change their expectations for fixed-income investments as interest rates and yields have risen

We wrap up with three final articles, all about taking action:

Why trying to live a life with ‘no regrets’ can hinder self-improvement
Why it is important to not let major ‘events’ distract from the overall ‘journey’, whether it is an interpersonal relationship or a client’s retirement
How a willingness to take imperfect actions can help drive advisory firm growth

Enjoy the ‘light’ reading!

Framing Prospect Conversations Around What Motivates Them Today (And Not Their Future Goals)

March 1, 2023 07:06 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Client Trust & Communication

When holding discovery meetings with a prospective client, financial advisors often ask the prospect about their goals. The hope is that these conversations will help the prospect ease into a positive frame of mind (by thinking about a vacation, retirement, or another future aspiration) and, at the same time, present the advisor with an opportunity to show how their services can help the prospect achieve their goals. However, the reality is that asking about goals has the potential to set prospects up for disappointment or dissatisfaction down the line, especially when achieving the goal is not financially attainable based on the prospect’s current situation, in which case the advisor might be seen as a ‘dream killer’. Even when a goal is achieved, it might not feel as good as the prospect imagined (e.g., feeling a lack of purpose after retirement). Consequently, finding meaningful ways to frame discovery-meeting conversations that don’t focus on the prospect’s future goals can sometimes be a better way to engage and motivate new clients.

By identifying a prospect’s current concerns and pain points and exploring strategies to address the issues that the prospect is facing now – instead of on future dreams that may still be far off into the future (and that are much vaguer to the client than the current situations faced today) – advisors can discover powerful motivators that can help the prospect to act more decisively (in fact, a particular problem the prospect has been struggling with might have been the reason they scheduled the discovery meeting in the first place!). Of course, diving right into a conversation to learn about a prospect’s particular pain points could make for an awkward discovery meeting. However, there are several ways to broach the subject indirectly, which can help advisors ease into the conversation more naturally. One approach is to ask the prospect about current concerns instead of pain points and explore what they would like to see as an outcome of working with the advisor (which could reveal pain points without framing the question in those terms). Another option for financial advisors is to solicit the client’s “anti-goals”, which are the things a person wants to avoid (e.g., financial regrets), as these can serve as powerful incentives for the prospect to take action (perhaps by becoming a client of the advisor!).

The first step to structuring discovery meetings that don’t address goals is to make a list of questions (e.g., “What do you want to ensure you won’t regret?”) that can be used to unearth a prospect’s pain points, anti-goals, current concerns, and aspirations. Lists can be important because asking non-goal questions can take some practice before asking them feels natural. In addition, advisors can consider sending some of the questions to the prospect in advance as part of an agenda for the discovery meeting (or perhaps adding a few questions to the meeting invitation itself) to help them be better prepared to respond. Further, in addition to the core questions the advisor wants to raise, asking appropriate follow-up questions during the meeting can also play a vital role in discovering what’s most important for the prospect to act on right now.

Ultimately, the key point is that while asking prospects about their financial goals might seem like a logical strategy for a discovery meeting, an alternative approach that indirectly brings out the prospect’s pain points can be more effective at motivating them to action. And for advisors, this method not only can help them identify what really matters to the prospect but also can potentially increase the chances that they will become a client!

#FA Success Ep 322: Developing New Advisors To Grow Their Books Of Business With A (Supported) Focus On Activity, With Kent Skornia

February 28, 2023 07:04 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 322nd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Kent Skornia. Kent is the Founder of Krilogy, an Independent RIA based in St. Louis, Missouri, that oversees nearly $2 billion in assets under management for 1,800 client households.

What's unique about Kent, though, is how, to grow advisors within Krilogy, he created an internal training system that focuses on mentorship, education, and especially the core activities that newer advisors need to learn to gain deeper knowledge of financial planning and to get started in growing their own book of business over time.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Kent developed the Krilogy Advisor Development System (or KADS for short), a proprietary training system that pairs newer Krilogy advisors with senior advisor mentors to support the senior advisor’s client base while training on and practicing the activities it takes for them to grow their own book of business (to eventually become senior advisors themselves), how Kent and his firm implement a ‘Zero to One FA’ activity tracking sheet (based on a combination of concepts from the book “Zero to One” by Peter Thiel and the ’75 HARD Challenge’) which compiles a list of fundamental activities that newer advisors in the KADS program should focus on with the intent that, much like building muscles, the scheduling and repetition of the activities will build their business development muscles, and how to help train and grow newer advisors further, Kent and his firm have created Krilogy University, a once-per-week training session open to all advisors of the firm that highlights financial planning concepts (with the curriculum designed by an internal wealth intelligence committee that also teach as in-house experts).

We also talk about how senior advisors at Krilogy can take advantage of the KADS program to gain support for their own books of business and eventually to find a successor for their practices when they want to retire, how Krilogy has established two Director of Advisor Development roles to oversee the training and advancement of newer advisors in the KADS so that senior advisors can mentor their newer advisors in financial planning and relationship building with clients but don’t have to be responsible for managing the associate advisor, and how Krilogy offers liquidity options for its senior advisors to sell a portion or all of their book of business to Krilogy while still remaining as an advisor under Krilogy and continue to serve their clients while taking some chips off the table.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Kent shares how Krilogy sought to instill a values-based approach in the firm that focuses on dedication, abundance, leadership, and respect to create alignment with all employees of the firm, provide excellent service to their clients, and retain their employee talent, why Kent believes a good way for newer advisors to find the right firm for them is to interview other newer advisors at the firm they seek employment to understand if the firm is really a good choice and truly cares about advisor growth and development, and why Kent feels that even though a successful firm is dependent on growth and achieving goals, success for him is building relationships with clients, employees, and those around him, and seeing how those relationships impact the lives of so many as they grow and find success of their own.

So, whether you’re interested in learning about why Kent decided to create an internal advisor training program to grow his advisors within the firm, how the costs of hiring advisors is covered by Krilogy and the ways advisors are compensated, or how Krilogy implements optional succession plans for senior advisors that transitions the retiring advisor over a two-year period, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Kent Skornia.

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#FA Success Ep 324: Managing Revenue And Income Volatility Through The Scaling Phase Of Growth, With Nancy Knous

The Future Of Advisor Platforms: Reducing Overhead Costs With Services (Not Technology)

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (March 11-12)

Kitces & Carl Ep 107: The Strategic Planning Process And Coming Up With (New) Ideas To Try

Want CE Credit for reading articles like this?

Factor Investing And Its (Behavioral) Persistence: Facts and Fiction About The Zoo Of Factors

#FA Success Ep 323: Sustaining A $5B Advisory Firm To The Third Generation Of Leaders, With Yonhee Choi Gordon

The Latest In Financial #AdvisorTech (March 2023)

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (March 4-5)

Want CE Credit for reading articles like this?

Framing Prospect Conversations Around What Motivates Them Today (And Not Their Future Goals)

#FA Success Ep 322: Developing New Advisors To Grow Their Books Of Business With A (Supported) Focus On Activity, With Kent Skornia

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Want CE Credit for reading articles like this?

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